Defend OOTP against my horribly Muggle mind!

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 76504

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, EnsTren at a... wrote:
> In a message dated 8/10/2003 8:39:37 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
> evangelina839 at y... writes:
> 
> > Again, I'm too uneducated to discuss quality of literature
> > convincingly, but I've always 
> > found Rowling better than Tolkien. No, I have not read Tolkien in
> > english, and not all 
> > of his books either, and yes, I admit that the older a book gets, 
the
> > harder it gets for 
> > me to relate to it (I think I've read too many books with poor 
and/or
> > over pretentious 
> > dialogue), but... when it comes to characterisation, Rowling is 
*way*
> > above Tolkien 
> > IMO. I feel like I could read any piece of dialogue, just pulled
> > completely out of 
> > context, and know which one of Rowling's characters who said it. 
To
> > me, that is really 
> > impressive actually. 


I've been able to do that with Tolkien for years. One of my friends 
used to occasioanlly and without warning throw a Tolkien quote at me 
and challenge me to identify it. Nowadays, I'm not quite as good as I 
was but....


> as I was saying, near as I can tell Tolkien's works are WORLD 
driven.  The 
> characters are props.  Look for descriptions of people in the 
books.  The main 
> characters.  Legolas gets Blond, and bright-eyed and that's pretty 
much it.  
> Oh, and he has a nice voice, and he talks to trees so much he 
sounds mildly 
> scitzo.
> 
> Did I mention that Almost ALL (namely the ones he actually 
mentions) elves 
> are described as having a nice voice and being bright-eyed?
> 


That is patronising to the elves. Legolas is a lot more than that. 
All the peoples of LOTR are fleshed out with their own 
characteristics, specch patterns, idiocyncracies etc.

 
> 
> I've always said that Tolkien's works are for people with little 
imagination. 
>  (meaning mental imaging via reading between the lines)  I DON'T 
need to know 
> every color of a blade of grass on a hill.   

Thanks for nothing. I read a lot between the lines of Tolkien. I read 
a lot between the lines of Harry Potter. I hugely enjoy thinking 
along the lines of "What went on after this event?" "Why did Ron 
react like that?" "Suppose Eowyn hadn't done that?" 

Tolkien sets the scene with his word pictures. Therefore, his 
climaxes build up more steadily. Jo Rowling gets stuck in sooner. But 
isn't that a feature of so-called "children's" literature? I can 
appreciate both authors - they are both great to read but as I said 
in an earlier posting, their style etc. is very different. So what. 
Would we want every author to write in the style of Shakespeare, 
Tolstoy, CS Lewis et al?

Geoff